New asteroid that 'belches out dust' discovered

All about asteroids – This graphic shows the track for asteroid 2004 BL86, which flew about 745,000 miles from Earth on Monday, January 26. That's about three times as far away as the moon.

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This graphic shows the path Asteroid 2014 RC took as it passed Earth on September 7. The space rock came within one-tenth the distance from Earth to the moon.

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NASA scientists used Earth-based radar to produce these sharp views of the asteroid designated "2014 HQ124" on June 8. NASA called the images "most detailed radar images of a near-Earth asteroid ever obtained."

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The Hubble Space Telescope snapped a series of images on September 10, 2013, revealing a never-before-seen sight: An asteroid that appeared to have six comet-like tails.

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A diagram shows the orbit of an asteroid named 2013 TV135 (in blue), which made headlines in September 2013 when it passed close by Earth. The probability of it striking Earth one day stands at 1 in 63,000, and even those odds are fading fast as scientists find out more about the asteroid. It will most likely swing past our planet again in 2032, according to NASA.

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Asteroid 2012 DA14 made a record-close pass -- 17,100 miles -- by Earth on February 15, 2013. Most asteroids are made of rocks, but some are metal. They orbit mostly between Jupiter and Mars in the main asteroid belt. Scientists estimate there are tens of thousands of asteroids and when they get close to our planet, they are called near-Earth objects.

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Another asteroid, Apophis, got a lot of attention from space scientists and the media when initial calculations indicated a small chance it could hit Earth in 2029 or 2036. NASA scientists have since ruled out an impact, but on April 13, 2029, Apophis, which is about the size of 3½ football fields, will make a close visit -- flying about 19,400 miles (31,300 kilometers) above Earth's surface. The images above were taken by the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory in January 2013.

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If you really want to know about asteroids, you need to see one up close. NASA did just that. A spacecraft called NEAR-Shoemaker, named in honor of planetary scientist Gene Shoemaker, was the first probe to touch down on an asteroid, landing on the asteroid Eros on February 12, 2001. This image was taken on February 14, 2000, just after the probe began orbiting Eros.

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The first asteroid to be identified, 1 Ceres, was discovered January 1, 1801, by Giuseppe Piazzi in Palermo, Sicily. But is Ceres just another asteroid? Observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show that Ceres has a lot in common with planets like Earth. It's almost round and it may have a lot of pure water ice beneath its surface. Ceres is about 606 by 565 miles (975 by 909 kilometers) in size and scientists say it may be more accurate to call it a mini-planet. NASA's Dawn spacecraft is on its way to Ceres to investigate. The spacecraft is 35 million miles (57 million kilometers) from Ceres and 179 million miles (288 million kilometers) from Earth. The photo on the left was taken by Keck Observatory, Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The image on the right was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

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One big space rock got upgraded recently. This image of Vesta was taken by the Dawn spacecraft, which is on its way to Ceres. In 2012, scientists said data from the spacecraft show Vesta is more like a planet than an asteroid and so Vesta is now considered a protoplanet.

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The three-mile long (4.8-kilometer) asteroid Toutatis flew about 4.3 million miles (6.9 million kilometers) from Earth on December 12, 2012. NASA scientists used radar images to make a short movie.

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Asteroids have hit Earth many times. It's hard to get an exact count because erosion has wiped away much of the evidence. The mile-wide Meteor Crater in Arizona, seen above, was created by a small asteroid that hit about 50,000 years ago, NASA says. Other famous impact craters on Earth include Manicouagan in Quebec, Canada; Sudbury in Ontario, Canada; Ries Crater in Germany, and Chicxulub on the Yucatan coast in Mexico.

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NASA scientists say the impact of an asteroid or comet several hundred million years ago created the Aorounga crater in the Sahara Desert of northern Chad. The crater has a diameter of about 10.5 miles (17 kilometers). This image was taken by the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1994.

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In 1908 in Tunguska, Siberia, scientists theorize an asteroid flattened about 750 square miles (1,200 square kilometers) of forest in and around the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia.

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What else is up there? Is anyone watching? NASA's Near-Earth Object Program is trying to track down all asteroids and comets that could threaten Earth. NASA says 9,672 near-Earth objects have been discovered as of February 5, 2013. Of these, 1,374 have been classified as Potentially Hazardous Asteroids, or objects that could one day threaten Earth.

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One of the top asteroid-tracking scientists is Don Yeomans at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by the California Institute of Technology. Yeomans says every day, "Earth is pummeled by more than 100 tons of material that spewed off asteroids and comets." Fortunately, most of the asteroid trash is tiny and it burns up when it hits the atmosphere, creating meteors, or shooting stars. Yeomans says it's very rare for big chunks of space litter to hit Earth's surface. Those chunks are called meteorites.

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Asteroids and comets are popular fodder for Earth-ending science fiction movies. Two of the biggest blockbusters came out in 1998: "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon." (Walt Disney Studios) Others include "Meteorites!" (1998), "Doomsday Rock" (1997), "Asteroid" (1997), "Meteor" (1979), and "A Fire in the Sky" (1978). Can you name others?

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Asteroid 1998 QE2 is about 3.75 million miles from Earth. The white dot is the moon, or satellite, orbiting the asteroid.

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Story highlights

The Hubble Space Telescope focuses on object in the solar system's asteroid belt

Astronomers discover it is an "asteroid with six comet-like tails of dust radiating from it"

"We were literally dumbfounded when we saw it," an astronomer says

One theory is that this is what happens to asteroids before they die

What's that in the sky? Is it an asteroid? A comet? A lawn sprinkler?

Turns out a newly discovered object is a little bit of all three -- minus the fact that you won't find many green lawns millions of miles from Earth -- NASA announced Friday.

"We were literally dumbfounded when we saw it," David Jewitt, who leads the team exploring the "asteroid with six comet-like tails of dust radiating from it like spokes on a wheel."

"It" is P/2013 P5, which NASA described as an "unusually fuzzy-looking object" when it was spotted in August in our solar system's asteroid belt.

The Hubble Space Telescope then focused on it, photographing it first in early September and then again 13 days later. By then, it looked completely different -- as if it had done a 180-degree flip, NASA said.

"Its tail structures change dramatically ... as it belches out dust," Jewitt, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, said in a news release. "That also caught us by surprise. It's hard to believe we're looking at an asteroid."

The first-of-its-kind discovery "completely knocked out" astounded astronomers, he added. Perhaps just as exciting is the expectation that this "amazing object (is) almost certainly the first of many to come."

As Jewitt said: "In astronomy, where you find one, you eventually find a whole bunch more."

The giant rock is about 1,400 feet wide and probably reaches surface temperatures of 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. For that reason, NASA thinks it's made of rock and not ice, like a typical comet is.

The streams of dust were ejected six times between April and September -- something that the NASA team members believe might have been caused by the asteroid spinning so fast that its surface, at times, broke apart.

NASA is still watching P/2013 P5 -- which Jewitt says apparently is a fragment of a bigger asteroid that broke off approximately 200 million years ago -- to figure out exactly why it's doing what it's doing. One theory is that this is one way that asteroids die.

The full findings were published on November 7 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.